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Mozambique: Level of Cahora Bassa Lake Slowly Rises
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
12 February 2008
Posted to the web 12 February 2008
Maputo
The level of the Cahora Bassa lake in central Mozambique is slowly rising, but this has not yet forced the dam to increase its discharges, reports Tuesday's bulletin from the National Water Board (DNA).
The lake is now almost 68 per cent full, but Cahora Bassa is keeping its discharges at the weekend figure of 4,000 cubic metres a second. So far Monday's opening of one of the floodgates of the Kariba dam, on the Zambia/Zimbabwe border has not been felt in Mozambique.
The floodgate was opened by 50 per cent, making an additional discharge of 750 cubic metres per second into the Zambezi. The Mozambican authorities believe that Cahora Bassa still has the capacity to store some of this water: the situation will, however, become more difficult if Kariba is forced to open any more of its floodgates.
The level of the Zambezi at Tete city rose again on Tuesday, reaching 5.02 metres - just two centimeters above flood alert level. Further downstream the river is still very much in flood, but is gradually subsiding.
Thus at Mutarara, the Zambezi fell from 5.54 metres on Monday to 5.47 metres on Tuesday morning. At Caia the drop over the same period was from 6.75 to 6.56 metres. (At both Mutarara and Caia, alert level is five metres).
As for Marromeu, the last measuring station before the mouth of the river, measurements have become impossible because a boat hit the scale on Monday. All the DNA can state with certainty is that the river is falling here too.
There was a sharp rise in the level of the Lucite river, the major tributary of the Buzi, on Monday. In just 24 hours the river rose from 3.54 to 6.43 metres, falling back to 5.7 metres on Tuesday morning.
This surge could result in further flooding on the Buzi. At Goonda, the Buzi rose from 3.2 metres on Sunday to 3.87 metres on Tuesday - but this is still well below the alert level of five metres.
As for the flood on the Pungue river, west of Beira, this is almost stationary, with the river measured at Mafambisse at slightly more than a metre above the alert level of six metres.
The DNA also warns that heavy rains in northern Mozambique have led to localized flooding. The Lugenda, Megaruma, Messalo and Montepuez rivers are swollen, causing floods in Chai, Mlangalewa and Nairoto in Cabo Delgado province, and in Mandimba in the neighbouring province of Niassa.
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Meanwhile, search and rescue operations are continuing in the Zambezi Valley, thus ending the hopes of the Mozambican relief agency, the National Disasters Management Institute (INGC) that these operations would end on Monday. According to a report in Tuesday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias", people are still being located in dangerous areas - thus on Monday 83 families at risk were discovered in the district of Tambara.
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| Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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